Morrowind: The Glittering Children
by Quietharm
Summary: A short reflection a retired adventurer takes in her older years while remembering her brother, her childhood and the homeland they shared.


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I am older now.

My time as a youth wandering capriciously in all directions known to the compass ended what seem to be eons ago. Even though this remains a truth, I can not help but feel it was as if yesterday I was a small girl, growing up near Lake Nabia in the Ashlands. As all seasons come and go, I can not help but to recall of how I used to be.

How _we_ used to be

I grew up the adopted child of an old Dunmer family, a high elf living almost those known as the dark. My origins were not important to me then, and that remains a solid truth even now.

I still reminisce now and again, about my elder brother. They named one such as he Sekil. He has long since removed his presence from the landscape that we mortals reside upon, but I can correctly visualize every single aspect about him. His complexion was malachite and ebony; smooth and undeterred like his personality. He possessed a pair of glinting eyes that always held ambiguity, which kept the observer always calculating his next potential move, should he cunningly deceive them. This was a belief based solely on his outward demeanor and the mistrust he seemed to evoke in strangers. To family, he was naught but a clever mischief-maker.

I may be an aged elf now, but oh, to feel the free spirited click of feet rapping solidly against the charred ground of the Ashlands in an anxious tandem to reach Lake Nabia...

It was there that Sekil and I played in our early days. He wasn't much older than I, which leads me to conclude that my time on this plane of existence grows short.

Much like his was.

That bears no reference to my inner reflections, however. As I stated before, Lake Nabia was where we spent innocent days playing and enjoying the very essence of what it meant to be young. Most believed Lake Nabia to be an unsuitable place to allow access to mere children, but my brother and I knew differently. Outlanders usually processed the idea that slaughterfish were readily abundant in both physical size and population within the gray depths, but this was simply a stretched myth. Slaughterfish did exist within the lake, but only in small numbers which included members of the same stature. It was a general, common sense rule to leave and let be, and they would do the same in return.

Irony is a cruel mistress in this way, as it was simply amazing to glean vague reports on how many visitors to the lake were bitten, while supposedly flippant children remained free of such ailments.

'Last one in is a rotten kwama egg!' ... He would always say that, just before beating me to the water's gently lapping edge. In a way that only his lithe frame could accomplish, Sekil would cut a clear, crystalline line through the cloudy liquid as he submersed himself completely within the comforting, aquatic embrace all around him. And I, with abandoned caution, would follow soon after with jubilant cries of indignation. I continually sought his attention, nearly starved myself for it. A shower of rainbows caught the dying haze of the afternoon sunsets upon that high country as two elven children played, unaware that their antics were a short-lived loop in the endless circle of time.

What strange, unseen force kept us from finding another place to idle away our childhood? Why return like cliff racers to their old nests atop the steep peaks of our native Ashlands? What was before us that blinded us during this time to the inevitable procession into adulthood?

I look back now, and I fully realize then that all I thought we had was eternity. We were simply leaves on a fickle breeze, one that all beings must submit to when the time comes for their ultimate departure. We changed with the seasons, which eventually blurred and become a collage known as a lifetime.

We eventually drew away from those play dates beside the sooty waters of Lake Nabia, expanding our adult perceptions and departing ways. The world awaited us, beckoning with a crooked finger that was gnarled and twisted with an unfathomable age. We took the bait much like the slaughterfish we shared our dear lake with in those primary days, just as countless others had before. We left home and each other, but in the end we were irrevocably drawn back to those same, ashen shores. Together we felt home calling and dutifully returned.

Our parents had taken up their places in the grand scheme of things, leaving their heirs with the abode and property. Together, we embarked on a realization upon that first reunion that neither of us had taken up any commitments to others.

Together, we layed waste to this loss.

Up until the day Sekil passed on, we kept a stern vigil for one another. Sekil had grown weary, much like I, but for my brother it was blatantly evident. There was a constant exhaustion that marred the subdued mockery found beneath the indifference of childhood. No longer did he stand tall and straight above my head, much like father's old fishing spear. No, he had lost what it meant to live.

The spark eventually smothered itself one hazy morning, when an unusual coat of ash blocked out whatever remained of a potential midday daystar. His breath was his last, drawn in a low rattle that shook his windpipe. Those same, dark eyes of his were encompassed much like the sun was, a victim of residual ash from previous events that left evidence of their activities. Like the physical manifestation coating the land around us, it had left itself known to the depths of his soul.

...And it showed.

His burial was a quiet one, up atop a small knoll overlooking our beloved Lake Nabia. It was there that I could be assured that he would forever bear witness to the constant lick of water against charred shoreline. It was here that he could look up into the sky on a clear night and see what we would never grow tired of seeing. The cosmos spread out before us above a dimming horizon like a blanket of purple, blues and blacks meshed together with billions of diminutive lanterns. In a way, we could almost come to believe that those very lanterns were supported by the small hands of numerous children that had expired long before and after our time.

For Sekil they would smile knowingly and beckon, not with the crippled digits of old age, but with the chubby ones only known to youth.

For myself, they lay in wait. I am the last member of a dynasty I can claim no blood ties to, yet it could not mean any more to me had I truly been a next-of-kin to Sekil. 

Age has already laid a hold upon my body, but refrains from touching my mind. That is reserved for the glittering children. For Sekil.

I am older now. 

...And yet my time has yet to begin.

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A/N: I have no clue as to where this came from, but I've been playing Morrowind lately, sooo... yeah. I just felt particularly bored and decided to type this thing up... for better or for worse. R&R!

Disclaimer: I do not own Morrowind, the characters therein save for my own originals, ect.


End file.
